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A client who currently owns a huge client base has asked us for a mobile web application development, that should run on both phones and tablets for the Android and iOS platforms. The expected features are thoroughly defined, but not the specific devices the app has to support.

I'm not exactly sure how the techical requirements shold be defined, considering the wide range of mobile devices out there and the possible combinations of web browsers and screen dimensions.

Should we ask for a range of devices that have be supported (even tough newer ones are getting released every month) so it's possible to extract the possible web browsers and screen dimensions?

Or perhaps just ask for the operating system names to support (iOS4, iOS5, Android 3.x, Android 4.x etc) and identify the possible screen dimensions for each platform ourselves?

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Consider the question of "how much work will I have to do if something that is in the contract as "All Android 4.x devices" comes out with a different screen size than is currently in the supported list?" Set top boxes? Tablets? Mini tablets? Maxi phones? Watches? – MichaelT Apr 22 at 2:51
It depends entirely how you go about laying out the User interface. Assuming that you're definitely using a web framework, I don't see how the difference of OS matters in comparison to the difference in screen size. The means to get data will use pre-existing web technologies such as AJAX. The only challenge is designing your UI in a way that can scale, if it doesn't make sense to scale, then try to support the minimal amount of different sizings, such as Phone/Tablet. Just take the most common devices with different resolutions. Such as iPad, Samsung S3, iPhone, maybe a Nexus S or something – David van Dugteren Apr 22 at 4:04
If you are using a mobile framework, you may want to coordinate the client's requirements with what the framework can handle. – JeffO Apr 22 at 12:48

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